When a lot is on the line, even Ohio’s normally partisan legislators can stand up for the little guys. Maybe that will happen soon with school funding: Thomas Suddes

Posted Feb 17, 2019

AP

Students clap for first responders as they walk the hallway at Boardman High School in Boardman, Ohio, after a lockdown drill on Thursday as students around the country marked the Feb. 14 anniversary of the school massacre in Parkland, Florida. In his column today, Thomas Suddes writes that, with new Statehouse leadership, public school funding in Ohio finally could rise to the top of legislators' priorities. (AP Photo)

Republican House Speaker Larry Householder, of Perry County’s Glenford, elected speaker in January with Democrats’ help, still seems to be in his, “I’m OK, You’re OK,” mode. Because Republicans run the House 61-38, they chair House committees. The speaker appoints chairs. Roughly half those whom Householder appointed earlier this month didn’t back him for speaker; they backed Republican ex-Speaker Ryan Smith, of Gallia County’s Bidwell.

To become speaker, Householder attracted 26 votes from fellow Republicans, 26 from House Democrats, while 34 House Republicans voted for Smith.

The House has 20 regular committees. Freshmen don’t get chairs. So the math alone suggested some chairs had to be Smith backers. Still, Householder was also speaker from 2001 through 2004. He relished the job’s clout. But Householder’s 59 now, and delighted to be a grandfather. No way has Householder lost his taste for power. But maybe it’s legacy time.

If so, timing may be right. The General Assembly, a GOP preserve for 22 of the last 24 years, has regained some experienced legislators after Ohio’s anti-voter term limits had retired them. The legislature doesn’t need any more 20-somethings who think they’re on C-SPAN.

Although it may seem like the impossible dream to those who want legislators to work, not just mouth off, General Assembly members – if experienced, or at least open-minded – have demonstrated that they can solve huge problems. Maybe this session’s can, too.

Consider the collapse in 1985 of Cincinnati-based Home State Savings Bank, sparking the most widespread bank shutdown since the Depression of the 1930s. Democrat Richard F. Celeste was governor. The GOP had just won control of Ohio’s Senate. (They’ve run it ever since.) Which state legislators energetically helped Celeste protect Ohioans whose money was tied up in privately insured S&Ls, such as Home State? Then-Rep. Bill Batchelder, of Medina, then and now Ohio’s iconic GOP conservative, and then-Sen. Richard Finan, a suburban Cincinnati Republican, prime sponsor of Ohio’s death penalty law.

True, Batchelder was close to the S&L lobby. And Home State, and many other shuttered S&Ls, were in Finan’s backyard. Still Home State’s owner, Marvin L. Warner, was a big donor to Celeste’s campaigns. And Warner had been Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to Switzerland.

In today’s Ohio politics, it might have been a close call between protecting S&L depositors and damaging Democrats. It wasn’t a close call then: Ohioans came first.

Likewise, there’s a very good reason – besides countless dedicated librarians – that Ohio arguably has the best public libraries in the United States. With the first Bob Taft (“Mr. Republican,” 1889-1953) among those in the lead, key Ohio officeholders of both parties have ardently backed libraries.

And then there was this: From the 1930s on, an Ohio tax on stocks and bonds had been the chief source of library funding. For a range of good reasons, the legislature repealed the “intangibles tax.” Early in the 1980, during Celeste’s administration, a bipartisan committee recommended, and the legislature approved, allocating a share of state tax revenue to libraries. With some ups (good) and downs (short-sighted), that’s the library funding system that remains in place.

Like Home State, library funding is an example of how, if General Assembly members and their leaders confront a policy challenge in good faith, when there’s a will at the Statehouse, there is always a way. And the policy challenge of this era is fair funding for public education.

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